We traded the toddler bed for a full-sized one and repainted the walls, though he kept the star-shaped nightlight.

He does not hide bread anymore.

And he does a thing that seemed impossible in those first terrified months: he closes his bedroom door all the way when he sleeps.

Not out of fear that someone will come in.

He closes it because he knows now he can open it again whenever he wants.

For seven years a closed door in my house meant absence, and grief, and a child who was gone.

Now it means the opposite.